


You'll Reign Supreme

by kaberett



Series: Proserpine: Black Hat Hacker [2]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Mechanisms (Band), Ulysses Dies at Dawn (Album)
Genre: Gen, Immortals in Space, Stealth Crossover, stealth Night Vale crossover, stealth The Scariest Library crossover, stealth series, the least anonymous gift ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:51:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaberett/pseuds/kaberett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sirens are not a metaphor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Reign Supreme

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fireinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireinthedark/gifts).



\-- everybody _always_ wants to hear about the _bloody_ Sirens. Alright, fine, but here's the deal: if you're not paying them you're going to be paying us. [Merch table's at the back](http://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/), and you're getting off lightly. Don't thank us or we might just change our minds.

***

It started back when a guy by the name of Achelous made the mistake of accepting a favour from Hecate. Well, you know what cthonic deities are like -- not that the Olympians were actually gods, o'course, though not for want of trying. Come the time that Hecate was moving into the security and reanimation divisions for the Acheron, she called it in. She isn't terribly forthcoming on the details, which considering that blood is money and she's got every single one of his daughters working for her makes a certain amount of sense. The Olympians stick fast by keeping their friends close and their enemies closer, but the fact of the matter is that your own flesh and blood has the most to gain from your unfortunate demise, in terms of wealth and power, and at the same time they're the only people any of these bastards were willing to trust with the family trade, so even with compartmentalisation kids learned more by way of trade secret than most of the big players in town were willing to let go.

Now as you know Ashes had been running this particular joint for a little while, going by the name of Hades. Now our Ashes is an acquisitive sort, as you may know, and what this means in practice is that they're not very generous. Oh, sure, they're willing to trade - but it's rare that anyone gets the better of them. They'd been keeping an eye on Hecate, of course, since she started to consolidate her new power base, so they weren't entirely surprised when she showed up on their doorstep. What _was_ a surprise were Achelous' kids, all ten of them: Thelxiope, Molpe, Himrope, Aglaopheme, Pisithoe, Parthenope, Legia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles. Ten daughters are pretty expensive to keep, certainly to keep alive, so they became something of a curiosity - which is why you'd hear all sorts of names for them. Attempts to keep a low profile.

None of them worked. But then they couldn't, really, not from the moment any of the girls opened her mouth. Voices like angels, Achelous used to say, not that he'd ever heard one - and not that he'd want to if he knew what he was talking about. But it's true enough the young women in question had very distinctive vocal qualities and most of the time were very persuasive - so Hades took the trade and put them to work in the outer offices.

As befits the headquarters of the Acheron - literal nerve-centre of the city, and therefore the planet, with the highest information density in several star systems - the buildings were fitted up to resemble a library. Well, a library of a kind. Across the extravagance of an empty, open space, devoid of life - a wasteland - there's a sprawling black staircase oozing down like a lava flow, and around the far walls niches and columns that look like they ought to hold statues and windows - but of course this is the City, this is Labyrinth, and nobody ever sees the light of day. At least, nobody who'd need to use the _front_ door.

And then there are the Sirens.

Hades doesn't need secretarial staff. They've got the entire bloody Acheron for that: human brains that are, still, just about capable of intelligent thought, after a fashion. Oh no, that isn't what they use Achelous' girls for. They use the girls' _voices _, as warning and as lure. The acoustic's set up very carefully, see - Hades could afford pretty well anything at this point - so their song echoes out across this cavern, this coffin of a plain, and it draws people in. Tricks with the walls mean it rings faintly into the nearest corridors and walkways, which consequently have a very high turnover in local population. Wander too close and you get caught: you find yourself spending more and more of your time in these edges, and sooner or later you'll forget you ever lived anywhere else, and as the corners closer turn empty you'll take another step into the web. Of course it's the people most susceptible to the idea that they just need one hit of confidence, a one-off borrowed piece of luck, that they'll stop after this one time, that're most likely to find themselves stuck.__

__That's where a good percentage of the Acheron volunteers come from. And it's why the Metropolitan Power Company has such a high volunteer rate, too: they spend more time than most in the vicinity, dropping off materials._ _

__That's not the girls' only purpose, though._ _

__Not everyone who ends up pulled up those steps and into those offices volunteers. Sometimes what they want to do is bargain. Then what they do is: they soften them up. Noone like Parthenope to convince someone they've got the best of a bad deal, and so off they go back out into the City waiting to be called back in... and all the while they're talking about how well they've done, and that's how the warning works. Doesn't take much attention to realise that whatever Hades promises you they'll call in something much bigger, with the threat of the Acheron behind them; but once Parthenope's been at you no-one's ever going to be able to convince you of it._ _

__And then there's folk like our soldier Ulysses. Catch them at just the right moment and they'd've told you that when the drink doesn't work, they walk right up and sit on the steps and just listen. They'd've told you it shut the screaming up, or at least out, at least for a while; they'd probably also have told you that it came back even louder._ _

__That, says Ashes, is why the sorry sod even came in, with no-one left to stop them. To ask to be given more of that. To ask to trade. Oh, they knew they couldn't win - but still (Agloapheme's speciality) they found themself hoping against hope in the dark pits of their murky soul._ _

__Some things are more interesting than trade, and in any case the song only works for a little while, before you need to be closer. There's only so close you can get. So Hades said no and turned Ulysses out - but you know how _that_ ended up._ _

__Hades, of course, had ways around the effects the Sirens had on most, and took great care that Olympians never worked out how to generate immunity. Oedipus might've got there, given enough time and motive, which is of course why Hades arranged the distractions. Hecate knew, having got the details from the girls themselves in exchange for getting them away from their father (she always did drive hard bargains). And when Proserpine moved in, well, she learned it too, but she'd got enough ambition to keep quiet._ _

__Demeter having financed the search mission post facto wasn't happy about that last bit - did her best to disrupt it and thus do them all out of jobs, never mind it'd take the planet down. But Proserpine's smarter and more stubborn, and really all Demeter could do was disrupt the culture medium supply - and not even that after the first time, once Proserpine'd rejigged the custom override protocols. So Demeter was left to stew, as it were, in her own juices - and the rest is a tale for another time._ _

**Author's Note:**

> [The Scariest Library](http://www.exurbe.com/?p=1992). It is long but you really _really_ want to read it.
> 
> I am sort of sorry, but not very.


End file.
